Holiday weekend

It's Friday morning in Adelaide and the start of a long holiday weekend here. Typically, it starts with travel delays - Sydney airport has come to a virtual halt due to an IT glitch. Well it makes a difference from striking air traffic controllers in France.

It's been getting hotter again here - mid 30's the last few days. We'd originally planned to head for the hills today to go fig-picking at Glen Ewin Estate, but there's bush fires up there so we've had to abort. Plan B is to head down to Moana Beach this afternoon with Kelly and the boys.

Yesterday (Thursday) Jo and I spent the morning on Seacliff beach and then, after a spot of lunch, we hopped on the train and went to the massive Marion shopping centre to pick up groceries for tea for the boys (including Chris). It was Kelly's long day at work so we wouldn't see her.

Home made hamburgers it was and very nice too. Our routine is to walk to Casa Bambini and collect Asher and Miller, then, back at our temporary home, we give them each some milk, switch on ABC Kids on the TV and this produces half an hour or so of peace. Next, we stick them in the bath, then feed them and before we know it, Daddy arrives and the adults eat together. By 7 pm they're all ready to head back to O'Halloran Hill - but not before watching Andy's Prehistoric Adventures - Miller's favourite - on ABC Kids.

While I remember, another feature of this holiday is Pop-See-Ko. One day, Miller came back from Casa Bambini and he was singing what we thought was Popsicle. I googled it when we got back and up popped this on You Tube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwn4beja1QE. Annoying and addictive - Miller can't get enough of it.

Last night, as usual, I checked the temperature in our house in Banchory using Hive remotely. Wow - all of a sudden it was 21 C! (I'd been keeping it at about 10 C.) We soon figured out why - Ross is back in Banchory for a few days before returning to Edinburgh at the weekend.

I tried another short cycle before breakfast yesterday morning, but, boy, am I struggling. It's going to take a while to regain any kind of fitness when I return - and to lose all the extra pounds I've gained.

To close, a couple of photos I'd meant to include earlier. First, strolling down the "laneways" (as they call them here), we came across this old fashioned sweetie shop:

On the night of my birthday BBQ at Chris and Kelly's, this is a nice one of Jo entertaining Asher:

Deep Creek and birthday

Well, it was a good bit cooler last weekend when we spent a couple of nights in The Sanctuary in Deep Creek Conservation Park. We were about 600 feet above sea level so that contributed a bit, but it was very strange when we arrived there on Saturday afternoon. As we left the main road, it was 27C, but just a couple of kilometres up the unsealed road, it had dropped to "just" 21C. It was like we'd entered a black hole all of a sudden.

The Sanctuary used to be an art gallery but it's now a holiday rental. Shabby chic is probably the best description of the place. It's an eco house - a simple rectangular build using what they refer to as rammed earth. The middle section of the house is the one that has all the utilities - kitchen, shower/WC etc and the rest is one big open plan room with a mezzanine floor above where Jo and I slept. This was our view when we awoke:

The house sits in 4 acres and the garden is kept pretty wild. We saw plenty of varieties of birds coming to visit, but didn't notice any of the larger animals in the garden itself - although there was plenty of evidence of 'roo poo scattered about the place. This presents a bit of a health hazard to the eating machine that is Asher Steele - he picks up everything and it goes straight to mouth.

There was a beautiful sunset but, unfortunately, this picture doesn't quite capture it:

On Sunday morning, Kelly and I took the long downhill road to Blowhole Beach:

The rest of the gang were driven down by Chris and we met up on the beach:

Kelly looked after Asher at lunchtime, whilst Chris drove Jo, Miller and I over to Leonards Mill for a spot of lunch/coffee. Miller tried his hand at croquet:

The afternoon was spent doing shifts with the boys. First, Jo and I did a couple of the trailwalks and then we took over whilst we reversed roles with Kelly and Chris later. Meanwhile the boys were happy to be entertained by DVD's:

Chris had cooked spag bog on Saturday and it was casserole on the slow cooker on Sunday. Chris had to return to university early on Monday morning, but the rest of us took our time to breakfast, shower, pack and leave, and we were back in Adelaide not long after lunch.

Tuesday was a day for Jo and I to head back in to the city and go to the Adelaide Writers' Week. We listened to three of the authors talking about their rather traumatic books, but it got a bit hot so we decided to leave and head to the balcony at Harry's Bar for a quick birthday beer - plus a cheese platter.

It was my birthday and we knew we were heading over to Chris and Kelly's for a meal, but we didn't realise that Matt, Amanda and Abby would be there too - and that Chris would be BBQ'ing what seemed like a mountain of protein. It was lovely - and the birthday treats didn't end there. Kelly arranged for Chris' Mum, Lorene, to babysit on her day off and she drove us up to the Adelaide Hills to the lovely little town of Uraidla for lunch at the hotel today (Wednesday)- and soon to be microbrewery - there:

Not content with that, Kelly took us on a short drive to the Prancing Pony Brewery - a place we'd visited a few times before - but soon it was time to head back to Seacliff, and for Kelly to get back to her boys. It's been a lovely couple of days.

It's getting hotter again - back in to the '30's C. Ed Sheeran's playing at the Adelaide Oval tonight - hope it cools down when the sun goes down and he takes the stage - it'll be an arduous session for his fans before then.

In other news, I've finally bitten the bullet and bought a new car - sight unseen. I gave my pal Malcolm Grigor (Banchory Car Centre) a rough spec of what I wanted and he's bought me a Volvo XC60 - 2017 plate with less than 4,000 miles on the clock, and with all the fancy widgets, I believe. Look forward to seeing it next week.